The Team Fortress 2 Blog details significant changes to the item drop system in Valve's teamplay shooter, indicating the changes are going live today. They outline the changes, which boil down to idlers finding few items after the changes are implemented, and everyone else will find items more frequently and with greater regularity. Looking forward, they say: "We're still thinking about how to allow you to influence your drops."

WinterMadness wrote on Apr 21, 2010, 10:48:Thank you Valve for this change! I'm not a hardcore player by any means, but there are times when I have a chance to sit down and play for 2-3 hours and it's VERY rare to get ANYTHING to drop whatsoever. In 3 HOURS of actual gaming. That's just retarded. And I constantly see people with every damn thing in the game. So how many freaking hours are these guys playing per week? Hopefully this will give the more casual players a chance to at least get a hat drop or the metal to craft one...

Aside from the hats (which are almost impossible to get without idling--I play a lot and have only had two drop, ever), you can get all of the weapons pretty dang fast just with going for the achievements. I don't even mean cheating on an achievement server--just playing the game with the achievements in mind can net you the weapons pretty quickly.

Thank you Valve for this change! I'm not a hardcore player by any means, but there are times when I have a chance to sit down and play for 2-3 hours and it's VERY rare to get ANYTHING to drop whatsoever. In 3 HOURS of actual gaming. That's just retarded. And I constantly see people with every damn thing in the game. So how many freaking hours are these guys playing per week? Hopefully this will give the more casual players a chance to at least get a hat drop or the metal to craft one...

ForgedReality wrote on Apr 21, 2010, 00:22:Oh well. It's not as if there are people out there who don't have all the weapons by now. A little late if you ask me, but I guess it's nice for newcomers, and those who bother with that crafting bullshit.

I don't have all of the weapons. I quit playing after the sniper update because I was waiting for the achievement whores to calm down and just never got back into the game.

I play on a fairly regular basis and still haven't gotten the friggin sword for the Demo to drop. Plus I've never had a hat drop ever. The only one I have is the halo they gave out.

ForgedReality wrote on Apr 21, 2010, 00:22:Oh well. It's not as if there are people out there who don't have all the weapons by now. A little late if you ask me, but I guess it's nice for newcomers, and those who bother with that crafting bullshit.

I don't have all of the weapons. I quit playing after the sniper update because I was waiting for the achievement whores to calm down and just never got back into the game.

So valve, let me ask u this, while back there was talk on your blog of implementing trading between players, trading their items... what happened to this? Somehow there is no more talk of this feature, what happened?

PHJF wrote on Apr 21, 2010, 00:42:They increase the drop rate because it takes 112 weapons to craft a single class-specific hat.

112

well it would if the steam hadn't eaten a reclaimed metal on me.

The worst problem with the hats is I want one particular hat, but the crafting chance of getting the right hat is only 25%. I'm now sitting on that classes items, so I can craft more tokens to redo the hat if it comes out wrong, which of course means I have to wait for even more drops before I can do the hat in the first place.

Fuck. It's dropping items ALL THE TIME now. I think maybe they boosted it too much. Oh well. It's not as if there are people out there who don't have all the weapons by now. A little late if you ask me, but I guess it's nice for newcomers, and those who bother with that crafting bullshit.